Tools for climate and agriculture
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“Wind chill” is a measure of how much colder you would “feel” if cold air is blowing on you with a particular wind speed. The higher the wind speed and the lower the temperature, the colder the wind chill temperature. The colder the wind chill, the faster you could experience hypothermia and suffer severe health…
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The USDA has announced the availability of a new GIS-based plant hardiness zone map, which is zoomable and is based on 1976-2005 data. You can read more about it at https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/AboutWhatsNew.aspx. You can access the map at the link above by clicking on Interactive Map on the top menu or go directly to it at https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/InteractiveMap.aspx.
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Fruit Growers News reported on a recent UF/IFAS web-based tool which is designed to help strawberry growers in Florida and South Carolina manage for botrytis and anthracnose fruit rots. It uses data such as temperature and leaf wetness to advise producers when to spray fungicides to help prevent these devastating diseases. You can read more…
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If you are interested in looking at long-term trends in climate across the US, this “Beyond the Data” article by Jake Crouch does a great job of explaining where to get trend data and how to interpret it. I use NCEI’s tooks like the “Climate at a Glance” tool all the time when I give…
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If you’ve been following the drought posts on this blog, you know that moderate drought is expanding across the Southeast. But sometimes the map doesn’t capture the full picture of what is going on in the ground because no one is there to report it. The Drought Monitor authors would love to have more information…
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Clint Thompson of UGA reported on Georgia peach farmers’ hopes that this winter will provide more chill hours for their trees than the last two winters. Last year in particular was particularly devastating for peaches with consistently above-normal temperatures leading to less than half the usual number of chill hours, followed by the mid-March frost…
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If you’ve ever looked for weather or climate data, you may feel a bit lost. There are a lot of places to get it if you know the secrets, but not all of them are equally easy to use. I have previously posted a list of sites at https://site.extension.uga.edu/climate/2014/09/list-of-web-sites-with-weather-and-climate-data-for-georgia-and-beyond/. But NOAA has a nice new site…